Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Zombie Maggots

A little story I put together after attending a panel at LibertyCon entitled "The Messiest Ways to Kill Zombies." I don't know about anything else, this has to be the grossest! Much thanks to Lin Wicklund, for the title and inspiration, Jonny Iffland for encouragement, and as always, Sanford Begley for his unswerving honesty. Enjoy!

Zombie Maggots

The original zombies were not the
shambling undead monsters of film and fiction, but hapless victims of
a bioengineered virus. Just where the first outbreak occurred is
still hotly debated amongst those who care, not that there's a lot of
those left anymore. Most of us are just worried about staying alive,
inside, with all the windows sealed tightly. Why aren't we worried
about running away from zombies?

Well, the answer to that question lies
in the well-intentioned mistake of a genetic engineer who was trying
to cure or kill the zombies. Fly larvae have been used to clean
wounds since medieval times, as maggots will eat the decayed flesh,
but not the living. His plan was to create fly larvae that would eat
the zombies, essentially biological warfare against the former humans
who had once lived amongst us, and now, did their level best to feed
off us all.

Bad enough that our erstwhile friends,
neighbors and family had become ravening beasts, the existence of
zombie maggots was enough to spend the entire world into a tailspin.
See, the zombie virus only infected perhaps one out of 10. Antivirals
could even catch it if it were early enough in the onset. The flies,
though…

But I'm ahead of myself. Even during
the a zombie apocalypse. It's nice to get to get out and have a
little fun sometimes. Although, had I known the apocalypse was
coming. I probably would have stayed home instead of flying through
Atlanta, and grabbing a shuttle up to Chattanooga. You see, I'm
usually a devoted husband and father, and when the news of the zombie
outbreak broke, I was attending a science fiction convention, a
thousand miles away from home.

We were all sitting in the con suite, I
was listening to the guys tell stories and wondering exactly how high
they would pile the shit before they gave it up and admitted they
were telling tall tales. Really, half the fans are writers themselves
and the amateurs can rival the pros when it comes to fiction,
especially when they are talking about their daily lives. I was
laughing my head off, I always have such a good time at this
convention. It's nice to get away from home and not be a mundane for
a while. But when the Hobbit came through the doors hollering “The
zombie apocalypse is coming!” We all laughed at him. Zombies are
pretty popular fiction these days, and they all figured he just had a
little too much at the bar. I knew he didn't drink, but I also know
his penchant for odd humor.

"No, really.” He babbled
excitedly. "Remember last year, when John Ringo wrote about
bioengineered viruses? Well, there's reports coming out of China that
someone made real zombies."

He waved his phone in the air. Seconds
later, every 'Fly in the room was on their own phone, laptop, tablet,
or leaning over someone's shoulder as articles and even video of the
zombies were pulled up. A Presidential press release with no
questions answered broke the news moments later that all air traffic,
and indeed all means of transportation, were being embargoed. The
room was quiet, almost unheard of with this crowd. But this massive
level of quarantine and the speed of the reaction shocked us all into
the reality that the apocalypse had indeed arrived.

The first thing I felt the need to do
was call home to my wife and kids… Well, I tried to dial. All I
could get was “all circuits are busy, please try again later."

I must have shown my feelings on my
face, because Jones, ever the quick one to see how any of us were
feeling, came by to squeeze my shoulder. “It'll be ok, man.”

I knew better, oh sure, I couldn't know
it for a certainty, but not letting anyone travel at all meant that
the virus was already here on the continental US. My hometown is a
little place out in the sticks. But it's only two hours travel from a
big international airport. Not that we were any safer here.

It took less than an hour for the first
meeting of the newly dubbed zombie patrol to happen. You see, the
group I hang out with isn't your typical mix of gamers and geeks that
attend a con. There's a heavy influence of military and hard science
people. It's probably the only group of people I've been a part of
that made me feel like I was not the smartest person in the room.
There's a few bright intellects amongst us that make me feel
downright stupid. Not that they ever mean to, and they're the nicest
folks you could ever chat with. Our first concern was to try and get
more facts. The consensus was that the the news had been suppressed
for some time, and had only been released when it could no longer be
suppressed and the quarantine had to be put into effect.

None of us like operating in a vacuum,
fortunately there were people like Piotr who had government contacts.
It took a few hours to get answers, and even then they would be
incomplete. In the meantime, the party restarted. Human nature being
what it was, we could smile and even laugh while the world lay in
ruins around us. The booze helped too. I wasn't drinking, I rarely
do, and I have a need for situational awareness, and tonight it was
heightened to the point of complete paranoia. I was downright
twitchy.

It wasn't just the news, though. I'd
had a gut feeling all day that something was going to go wrong. I had
attributed it to not liking crowds, but now I knew it was related to
this. Something was happening, and it was coming fast. I did notice
that not all of us were partying. Several, who had been pulled aside
earlier by the two guys who were rapidly taking charge, seem to be
standing sentry. Others came and went quietly, stopping to talk with
the organizers of the zombie patrol. I had grabbed a notebook, a
regular paper one, and now I slid into the chair next to the guy in
charge. Tall and slender, his blonde hair was rumpled, despite its
short length, from the wig he'd been wearing earlier.

"Want me to keep inventory?"
I asked Zane quietly. He looked at me, obviously thinking for a
moment. Then he shook his head. He looked around a minute. “Sam...”
He called across the room to a nondescript guy with silver hair I
hadn't really noticed before. The older man looked alert and
concerned and now that I saw him, I could see he was standing guard
over a young woman who had her head down on the table next to him.
“Send Thuja over here, will you?”

Sam gave him a crooked smile and a nod,
then bent over her to talk to her. Shane continued to me in a low
voice. “She's got four kids at home in New England, and I know her,
she'll be better off if she's busy.”

I understood. I felt the same way.
Something to do to keep my mind off the uncertainty, and the nagging
feeling that my place was at home defending my family against the
great unknown. She showed up at the table with calm face, a little
damp around the eyes, but eager enough to take my notebook and start
writing down lists.

I'd known that the guys coming in and
telling him exactly what weapons were available, and how much ammo
everybody had for them. We had been to the range, early that morning,
but there was still a lot left. If it got really bad, we need it. I
also knew even before it had been stated in the meeting earlier, that
the primary danger would be from rioting and looting, not from
zombies. People behave badly in crises, and I knew I was lucky to be
with this group.

Our ad-hoc secretary kept more than
inventory, making notes of ideas as people drifted to and from the
table. Some of the zombie killing ideas were pretty far-fetched,
where on earth would we find an airport snowblower in southern
Tennessee? We weren't entirely sure we would even ever see zombies,
but it was better to plan and prepare for the worst case, and I am
always planning.

Also, keeping busy kept me from
thinking too much about my family. I had taken the time during the
evening to get my laptop and e-mail home. The Internet seem to be at
least partially functional, and the parts that were down were
probably from overload as the whole world tried to figure out what
was going on. Rumors abounded, but our unspoken consensus was that we
would take none of our information from the Internet.

After a while, all of the ideas were
far-fetched. Setting zombies on fire, using them as fuel, or (God
forbid) eating them, all seemed to be flights of fantasy. No one
seemed to want to leave, although it was getting late. Around 2 AM,
her boyfriend came and got Thuja. To be more accurate, he gently
lifted her up from where she was resting her head on the table. "I'm
not asleep." she mumbled at him. "Just resting my eyes."

I stood and stretched. I'd stayed put
when she crashed to keep an eye on her, while Sam had been in on the
planning session taking place at a lower table. I'd heard the gentle
rumble of the Behemoth's voice, along with several others I knew
well. The core group was coming together in crisis as I'd expected.
Too many of us have training not to make this happen.

I nodded at him and asked “Sentry
duty?”

"It's not really sentry duty, too
many open spaces around here, more just keeping an eye on things,
sounding out the feeling of the hotel. Speaking of which, per
government order were staying here for free. We're refugees."

I stopped suddenly. "My laptop. I
need to check my e-mails."

He nodded and called across the room,
"Hey, Ted, you still have Thuja's things? And this guy wants his
laptop."

The skinny balding man who rarely spoke
nodded at him. He was sitting next to a table full of laptops, purses
and sundry items, including my laptop, which I picked up now.
"Thanks, Ted."

He surprised me by taking my hand and
gave it a little squeeze. "We'll get you home somehow."
Suddenly choked up, I nodded at him and headed out the door towards
my room.

"There's more to this than some
virus," Don caught up to me, and as we walked together to the
other building he went on gravely. The big man had family out there,
too. "There's no way they could get the authorization to shut
down the US like this. There's something else, something worse."

I remembered the next words I uttered
for very long time. "What could possibly be worse than zombies?”

The next morning the women cooked
pancakes and I helped with the breakfast crew. As I carried things
around the BFC I heard snippets of conversation. Others were
concerned about their families as well, and there was a lot of
hugging as we all reassured one another. The general mood of the
mundanes seemed to be confusion and a sense that it was somehow all a
drill and life would go back to normal any moment now. Piotr just
shook his head when he heard that one. We knew he had more
information, but we didn't press yet. He'd tell when he could, and if
he knew we had to know, we'd know.

Feeding people felt good. When I sat
still and had time to think… well, I kept myself pretty busy all
day. Thuja made me eat once, and Jones brought me a bottle of water
late in the afternoon and made me sit down and drink it with him.

"You need to start taking care of
yourself.” He told me gently. “We need you, your kids need you to
make it home. And we don't have the time to worry about you. There's
rumors that there is some infected landed at the Atlanta airport."

I nodded at him. "I know I need to
do better, I'll try to eat and drink. I heard the rumors too, and
honestly I'm not sure what to do about... Against an epidemic under
the circumstances. Quarantine…" I sighed deeply and put my
hands over my eyes. “I'm sure there's people here somewhere that
have studied epidemiology."

He nodded. "Yes, but the more
brains we have on it, the better our solutions can be." He
squeezed my arm as he stood up and I looked up at him. He was a
gentle giant who spent most of his time behind a desk, and the rest
of it at the shooting range. He was also lucky, his kid was with him
on this trip.

"Thanks, Jones." He nodded
and walked away and I looked around the room. There was still a lot
of aimless people, but it was easy to see that the core group of
sheepdogs had shaken out. We still weren't entirely sure what we were
up against, but we were ready for something. There was a tension in
the air. I still had that feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach.

The roads had been quiet all day. We'd
sent out a couple of scouting parties in local vehicles with people
who knew the back ways. They brought back people and supplies as it
had been decided we'd hole up at the hotel rather than run to another
location. The mundanes hadn't asked for protection... didn't seem to
even know they needed it yet... but we'd decided to provide it. Our
group grew slightly as a few outside our group were invited into the
meetings, but even some of our group faded out of active planning for
various reasons.

Now, though, I could hear a siren come
screaming up the road. I started to run for the door, and could hear
Zane behind me barking out orders to the sentries. He could have
outrun me easily, but chose to lope easily at my side as I headed
toward the main road. There was a small group of mundanes in front of
the lobby when we arrived and he shoved through them easily, the
force of his presence making itself known.

He thrust out a hand to the policeman
standing there. I hung back a step, watching the crowd and looking at
the officer with his nervous eyes. I saw another of our group show
up, but he stayed on the periphery. I nodded to him and relaxed a
little. It wasn't just me watching for trouble. The police officer
looked pale and sweaty, his hands shaking as he spoke loudly.

“Infected people... Um,” He gulped
once. “Zombies, are approaching the city. We recommend everyone go
inside and avoid any contact with them. They are considered very
violent, and will attack without warning. Also, any contact may be
considered dangerous.” He shivered and my gaze on him sharpened.

“Zane, he's in shock.” I muttered.

As if on cue, the officer's eyes rolled
into his head and he started to collapse. Zane and I caught him and
got him safely to the ground. “Call Schimmer.” Zane clipped out,
unbuttoning the man's shirt and taking his pulse.

We'd been given some of the radios the
security staff used, so I lifted it to my lips and started to talk...
then stopped as I saw my first zombie. Later, they tell me I said
“Send in the Zombie Patrol, now!” But honestly I don't remember
speaking, just reacting to that... thing.

It wasn't human anymore. Oh, sure, it
still had two arms, legs, and a head, but the person was gone and
only the shell was left, running towards us awkwardly. It was bent
nearly double, one leg wasn't working right so it wasn't exactly
fast, and I could see dark drool and bubbles of froth coming from its
mouth as it appeared around the Brewhouse almost on top of us. Only
one, but a whole group of people around us who were now panicking and
doing their best to run away.

Zane was still on the ground with the
cop. I stood over them and Mazzie, who'd been the perimeter guard,
bellowed for the innocent bystanders to follow him. He led them
toward the big double doors of the grand lobby. I'd been given a
sword out of his collection of sharp pointy things, and now I drew it
from the improvised belt and held it one handed, a hammer I'd swiped
from maintenance in the other. I didn't know what it would take to
kill this thing, and we'd decided to save ammo, so I left the gun
holstered on the other hip.

Zane was up next to me now, scanning
the area for more of them while I watched the zombie approach. Out of
the corner of my eye I could see the Patrol arriving, and Mazzie
giving them directions before taking up a position in front of the
door, steel bared and ready. By the time the foul thing was less than
50 feet from me I'd decided to try something, so I took a step toward
it, spreading my arms, and bellowing a shout as I did so. It
flinched, whatever was left of the brain seeing me as a threat, but
then the hunger took over and with a shrill whine it scurried toward
me, almost knuckle-walking in the urgency to reach me.

Turns out killing them isn't hard.
Lopping at their necks like taking a tree down works. So does
smashing their brain pan once they're down. I'm not a trained
swordsman, but I've chopped a few trees in my time. It lay on the
ground twitching and bleeding black blood with me panting over it.

Zane swatted me on the back. “Only
the one, so far. Good work.”

I gulped a deep breath and then
regretted that. “Ugh.” I backed up rapidly. “Dayum, that's a
stink.”

Schimmer looked up from kneeling beside
the policeman. “I'll take a look at it in a minute. Our first
casualty.” He finished mournfully, laying the man's shirt over his
face.

“What happened?”

“Heart attack, would be my guess.”

“Ok, we have two bodies on our hands,
what next?”

Behemoth lumbered up, with Don in tow.
The two of them could hire out as an ablative meat wall, the biggest
guys I know. I always feel like a shrimp next to them. Don was
carrying sheets. “One of the security guys is coming with a golf
cart and trailer. We'll get them off the street at least and see if
we can reach the authorities.”

Don gently laid a sheet over the cop.
Schimmer crossed himself and stood up, shaking his head. “I want to
take a look at the zombie. Where's Thuja? I know she's got some
medical training. Who else?”

Mazzie walked up, still scanning the
area, and heard the question. “One of Taz's boys is in pre-med.
See if you can find him, too.”

I nodded and used the radio to put out
the call. Shortly it was just Schimmer and I standing near the body
of the creature, trying not to breathe to deeply. Schim's reaction to
the stench was unprintable. Neither of us really wanted to get closer
to it, but when the trailer showed up we'd wrapped it in sheets and
lifted it in. I was shocked at how light the body was.

The three of them did a sort of
autopsy. I heard the Taz kid saying it was more of a hack job, and
the only one who didn't lose her breakfast was Thuja. Without a lab,
they couldn't tell much about it besides the blood was thicker than
it ought to have been, the brains were basically black jello (don't
ask me how they got at the brains, some things are better left
unimagined) and the body was decaying from the inside out. They also
said that an ear and two fingers were found in the stomach. Then I
felt like losing my last meal.

The lovely ladies of BFC somehow
managed a good spread for dinner. We'd been there longer than we'd
planned, now, and food supplies from our own stores were running low.
We'd need to do something about that, but tonight even the sentries
were rotated in to eat well. I asked Laura how the women felt about
playing house while the men were out on patrol and she shrugged.
“Someone has to make sure your bellies are full and brains sharp.
We'll fight if they get this far, all of us are armed, but we'd
distract you if we were on patrol with you.”

I nodded. The discussion about women in
combat had been going on for a long time on the Bar, and she was
right, men are wired to think first about the female, then
themselves. We couldn't afford to lose anyone to stupidity. The
Dwarf, a complete misnomer as he was taller than I, came to sit down
heavily next to me. “Whew, it's hot out there.”

“I haven't seen you all day. How's it
going?”

“Well, we had a batch come up the
railroad tracks. Musta been fourteen or so, they bunch up and it's
hard to count when you're trying to kill them fast.”

Ginger handed him a beer. “Bless you
my lady.” He intoned and drained it. “Ah... Yeah, they aren't
real coordinated but some of them are fast.”

“We can't stay here.” Piotr sat
down on my other side.

“I think we'd better have a meeting.”

He shook his head. “I need to make an
announcement, then we'll have that.”

I turned and saw the Behemoth. “Joe,
we need to get everybody quiet a minute.” He nodded, then stood.

“Listen up!” He bellowed. Instant
silence fell, and Piotr stood up. Every eye in the place was on him.

“The zombies aren't the worst thing
out there. A scientist working on either a cure or a bioweapon
against them fu...” he looked at Linnet, who was giving him the
evil eye. “Er, goofed up. He genetically manipulated the blow fly,
trying to create larvae that would target the zombies. Instead, we've
got an airborne vector that spreads the virus. Eggs are laid on the
skin, they are cemented on so there's no way to remove them except
cutting them off. When they hatch, they burrow in, and spread the
virus through their saliva if the parent was exposed to zombies.
Which they will have been by the time we see them.”

He stopped to take a breath and rubbed
his hand over his head. “They are spreading as fast as the zombies
at this point. We are going to need to find someplace where we can
get inside and stay in as much as possible.”

He sat down, and the leaders of the
Patrol showed up as if by magic. I stood and nodded to Zane as I
walked outside to take the section he'd been watching. I looked up
into the sky and wondered how we were going to fight against flies.
Swords and guns weren't going to hack it.

The zombies were becoming more numerous
that day, and I was out in the thick of it for most of the day while
the planning was happening. While not too difficult to evade, it was
still hot and tiring work. We had one casualty, he slipped in zombie
blood and fell, breaking his arm.

All around us for two days the
evacuation had been going on. Our second supply run had been stopped
and we'd been warned that unauthorized vehicles would be targeted and
destroyed. We'd begun to feel like an island, forgotten, when the
cavalry showed up. National Guard APC's with three buses in tow. The
soldiers looked tense, and I tipped my hat to them as they pulled up.
One young man looked startled at that. Guess he's never seen a guy
covered in zombie blood and wearing a cowboy hat with torn t-shirt
shirt, utilikilt, and sandals. I'd needed the hat from my costume,
though, the sun had been getting to me.

There wasn't room for everyone. I'd
known that when I saw the buses. We helped get the mundanes loaded,
which was mostly arguing with them about having to leave their stuff
behind. As they were trickling in, I wandered close to where Zane was
talking to the lieutenant in charge.

“We have new intel,” He was saying.
“There's an insect vector. You need to have your men checking for
eggs on their skin and clothing, and if you find any, get them off.
It spreads the virus.”

The lieutenant shook his head. “I
haven't heard about this, sir. Are you sure?”

Zane sighed. “We have a reliable
source. I understand there are a lot of rumors flying. This isn't one
of them. Understood?”

That last came out in a command bark,
and the young officer paled slightly and nodded. Zane turned away and
gestured at me. “Let's gather in BFC again. Time to make a bug out
plan.”

It was a much reduced group that met
at the long bar. The families had sent wives with children on the
buses and any of ours who weren't in something resembling fighting
shape had been sent too. After the normal people were loaded we'd
added those. So there wasn't room for all, but even those who
couldn't fight could think, and now we needed to get out of town
before the flies found us. We'd been given permission to caravan out
in personal vehicles, but warned that most gas stations were closed
as the civilian population had been largely evacuated.

There were probably thirty or forty of
us, people kept moving so it was difficult to count. Four to a
vehicle for comfort and room for stuff, and that mean at least ten
vehicles. As most of us had flown in, we had a few personal vehicles
still, and some rentals. Evacuees had left keys for a couple more. It
was doable, barely. The next question was where to go. Most of us had
family, and those who didn't had critters that needed taking care of.
However, splitting up seemed like a bad idea.

We might still be sitting there
debating if we hadn't heard the shouts from the sentries. We all
spilled out into the dusk and could see them coming in a wave, down
the train tracks to the heart of the hotel. I could hear the heavy
cracks of someone's gun, hard to tell which one as several others
opened up. We wanted to stop them before they got too close. We were
all tired, but I felt my body shift into overdrive as I drew and
fired.

It was dark by the time we'd finished
them. I drooped against a post, my empty pistol hanging in my hand.
Don came by and casually swung the sword he was carrying to smash the
head of the zombie at my feet. We didn't know if they needed to be
brainless, it just felt right. “C'mon.” He grunted and I followed
him into the parking lot. There was a small group standing around a
heap of zombies, shining lights onto it.

I got close enough to see what they
were looking at. What had been the man's chest was seething with fat
white worms. If they were the maggots they were huge, fully the size
of my pinky finger. Mindlessly consuming their prey, they posed no
immediate threat to us, but I shuddered at the thought of one of
those things under my skin. I could hear the slurping noise of them
eating, and I turned away to dry heave. I wasn't the only one.

“Load it up.” Zane called. “We're
going right now. There don't seem to be flies in the dark, but
they'll be here in the morning.”

I wound up in a van with Sam, Thuja,
and the Dwarf. I hadn't seen Thuja since the day before. The Dwarf
and I had fought shoulder-to-shoulder at some point earlier in the
evening. It seemed like a week. I could see the car in front of us,
and twisting around, the line of headlights behind us.

“Where are we going?” I asked Sam,
who was driving. Thuja answered. “Short run, John's place. Long
run... well, we don't know. We can't split up, and I'd never make it
home on my own.” She sounded sad and tired. Sam reached over and
took her hand without speaking. She went on, “my kids and family
are on their way to Canada. I got an email.”

“Mine are going to my wife's parents
in Colorado.” I told her. “Piotr said the flies react badly to
cold, they're too big to keep flying in the cold. So I told my wife
to get everyone as high as they can.”

She nodded without looking back and I
guessed she'd said something like that to her Dad as well. I leaned
back and closed my eyes, letting the exhaustion pour over me. I
stank, I was tired and hungry, and I didn't know where we were going
or when I'd see my family again. All I could do was trust that this
band of gun geeks had what it took to get us all home and maybe we
could figure out how to solve the apocalypse on the way.